MOVIE REVIEW: 'Pirates of the Caribbean 5' sails back with a vengeance

Thursday

May 25, 2017 at 12:01 AMMay 25, 2017 at 2:56 PM

Johnny Depp in his fifth go-round as scallywag Capt. Jack Sparrow does not disappoint in this otherwise uneven action comedy.

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Move over Moses; it looks like you’re not the only one who can perform that parting-of-the-sea trick. Turns out Johnny Depp and his mateys in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” can do it just as well – perhaps even better, as the motley crew of the Black Pearl proves it can actually sail right along the trough’s precipitous edge without tipping over. Neat, huh? You bet it is; almost as thrilling as the St. Martin’s bank robbery that grants Johnny Depp a grand entrance in his fifth go-round as scallywag Capt. Jack Sparrow. Not only do his abettors steal the safe via a team of horses; they drag off the entire bank with it; making for some terrific Buster Keaton-like slapstick involving Depp being thrust off, then back onto the suddenly mobile structure.

I doubt it was intended, but that five-minute-plus sequence also stands as a perfect metaphor for a movie that repeatedly tosses you off, then entices you to clamber back on a rumbling, tumbling pile of claptrap. As always, it’s action scenes like that one that are the rapidly tiring franchise’s lifeblood; just as it is its insistence on squeezing in needless love stories that deliver a fatal shot to the bow. It used to be Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) supplying the squabbling kissy-face. But they’re old (ages 40 and 32) by Hollywood standards. The kiddos demand new blood, and this seafaring monstrosity provides them just that in the persons of Will and Elizabeth’s now 20-something son, Henry (deadly dull Brenton Thwaites), and tough-as-nails newcomer Carina Smyth (lovely, raven-haired Kaya Scodelario), who has significant Luke-and-Darth Daddy issues of her own.

So it’s back and forth we go: action, good; mush, bad. Luckily, the former wins out considerably. But even that grows tiresome once the ghost sharks are released. And, say, did I really see Fonzie water skiing over them? It had to be, because this doubloon-minting franchise has now officially jumped the shark. Yet, I must admit, I was surprised how eager (at least at the start) I was to see Depp prancing around once again as Captain Jack. And he seldom disappoints. Neither does old nemesis Capt. Hector Barbossa (the incomparable Geoffrey Rush), nor does newly arrived villain, Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem, superb), the ghostly ghoul with a crumbling face and a serious need to see Captain Jack wrapped in a sheet – as in bloody dead.

As always, the plot is secondary to the chance to watch great actors – and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney – shiver your timbers by dressing up to play swish-buckling pirates employing thar best sea-voyaging grunts (argh). This one, like its predecessors, involves a curse, an elusive gizmo (something called the Trident of Poseidon) that must be found and a band of surly ghosts wreaking supernatural havoc. What’s missing are the laughs. That is unless you find it side-splitting that Sparrow’s crew gets a childish giggle out of Carina calling herself a horologist. “Me Mum was one, too,” says one toothless buccaneer. Ha ha! The action scenes, helmed by the directing team of Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg (“Bandidas”), are the film’s savior, bailing the pair out whenever their film starts to drag and sag. It also benefits greatly from the talents of its three frontline stars, all of whom are terrific. One dare not imagine how awful “Dead Men Tell No Tales” would be without them consistently propping up the likes of Thwaites and Scodelario, neither of whom possesses an ounce of charisma or chemistry. All they do is fortify the belief that it’s time for this phantasmic franchise to finally give up the ghost. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES (PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence, and some suggestive content.) Cast includes Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem and Kaya Scodelario. Grade: C+

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